The Wife Page #5

"The Wife" is a poignant short story by Anton Pavlovich Chekhov that delves into the complexities of marriage and the nature of love. The narrative follows Masha, a woman who reflects on her relationship with her husband, Ivan, as tensions and emotional disconnect manifest in their lives. Chekhov masterfully captures the nuances of hope, despair, and the often-unspoken struggles within a partnership, inviting readers to ponder the true essence of companionship and the sacrifices made in its name. Through rich character development and subtle insights, "The Wife" explores themes of longing, identity, and the bittersweet nature of human connection.

								

freight nor ballast, would overturn. And that evening I understood that
my uneasiness was not disappointment, as I had supposed, but a different
feeling, though what exactly I could not say, and that irritated me more
than ever.

"I will go to her," I decided. "I can think of a pretext. I shall say
that I want to see Ivan Ivanitch; that will be all."

I went downstairs and walked without haste over the carpeted floor
through the vestibule and the hall. Ivan Ivanitch was sitting on the
sofa in the drawing-room; he was drinking tea again and muttering
something. My wife was standing opposite to him and holding on to the
back of a chair. There was a gentle, sweet, and docile expression on her
face, such as one sees on the faces of people listening to crazy saints
or holy men when a peculiar hidden significance is imagined in their
vague words and mutterings. There was something morbid, something of a
nun's exaltation, in my wife's expression and attitude; and her low-
pitched, half-dark rooms with their old-fashioned furniture, with her
birds asleep in their cages, and with a smell of geranium, reminded me
of the rooms of some abbess or pious old lady.

I went into the drawing-room. My wife showed neither surprise nor
confusion, and looked at me calmly and serenely, as though she had known
I should come.

"I beg your pardon," I said softly. "I am so glad you have not gone yet,
Ivan Ivanitch. I forgot to ask you, do you know the Christian name of
the president of our Zemstvo?"

"Andrey Stanislavovitch. Yes...."

"Merci," I said, took out my notebook, and wrote it down.

There followed a silence during which my wife and Ivan Ivanitch were
probably waiting for me to go; my wife did not believe that I wanted to
know the president's name--I saw that from her eyes.

"Well, I must be going, my beauty," muttered Ivan Ivanitch, after I had
walked once or twice across the drawing-room and sat down by the
fireplace.

"No," said Natalya Gavrilovna quickly, touching his hand. "Stay another
quarter of an hour.... Please do!"

Evidently she did not wish to be left alone with me without a witness.

"Oh, well, I'll wait a quarter of an hour, too," I thought.

"Why, it's snowing!" I said, getting up and looking out of window. "A
good fall of snow! Ivan Ivanitch"--I went on walking about the room--"I do
regret not being a sportsman. I can imagine what a pleasure it must be
coursing hares or hunting wolves in snow like this!"

My wife, standing still, watched my movements, looking out of the corner
of her eyes without turning her head. She looked as though she thought I
had a sharp knife or a revolver in my pocket.

"Ivan Ivanitch, do take me out hunting some day," I went on softly. "I
shall be very, very grateful to you."

At that moment a visitor came into the room. He was a tall, thick-set
gentleman whom I did not know, with a bald head, a big fair beard, and
little eyes. From his baggy, crumpled clothes and his manners I took him
to be a parish clerk or a teacher, but my wife introduced him to me as
Dr. Sobol.

"Very, very glad to make your acquaintance," said the doctor in a loud
tenor voice, shaking hands with me warmly, with a naive smile. "Very
glad!"

He sat down at the table, took a glass of tea, and said in a loud voice:

"Do you happen to have a drop of rum or brandy? Have pity on me, Olya,
and look in the cupboard; I am frozen," he said, addressing the maid.

I sat down by the fire again, looked on, listened, and from time to time
put in a word in the general conversation. My wife smiled graciously to
the visitors and kept a sharp lookout on me, as though I were a wild
beast. She was oppressed by my presence, and this aroused in me
jealousy, annoyance, and an obstinate desire to wound her. "Wife, these
snug rooms, the place by the fire," I thought, "are mine, have been mine
for years, but some crazy Ivan Ivanitch or Sobol has for some reason
more right to them than I. Now I see my wife, not out of window, but
close at hand, in ordinary home surroundings that I feel the want of now
I am growing older, and, in spite of her hatred for me, I miss her as
years ago in my childhood I used to miss my mother and my nurse. And I
feel that now, on the verge of old age, my love for her is purer and
loftier than it was in the past; and that is why I want to go up to her,
to stamp hard on her toe with my heel, to hurt her and smile as I do
it."

"Monsieur Marten," I said, addressing the doctor, "how many hospitals
have we in the district?"

"Sobol," my wife corrected.

"Two," answered Sobol.

"And how many deaths are there every year in each hospital?"

"Pavel Andreitch, I want to speak to you," said my wife.

She apologized to the visitors and went to the next room. I got up and
followed her.

"You will go upstairs to your own rooms this minute," she said.

"You are ill-bred," I said to her.

"You will go upstairs to your own rooms this very minute," she repeated
sharply, and she looked into my face with hatred.

She was standing so near that if I had stooped a little my beard would
have touched her face.

"What is the matter?" I asked. "What harm have I done all at once?"

Her chin quivered, she hastily wiped her eyes, and, with a cursory
glance at the looking-glass, whispered:

"The old story is beginning all over again. Of course you won't go away.
Well, do as you like. I'll go away myself, and you stay."

We returned to the drawing-room, she with a resolute face, while I
shrugged my shoulders and tried to smile. There were some more
visitors--an elderly lady and a young man in spectacles. Without greeting
the new arrivals or taking leave of the others, I went off to my own
rooms.

After what had happened at tea and then again downstairs, it became
clear to me that our "family happiness," which we had begun to forget
about in the course of the last two years, was through some absurd and
trivial reason beginning all over again, and that neither I nor my wife
could now stop ourselves; and that next day or the day after, the
outburst of hatred would, as I knew by experience of past years, be
followed by something revolting which would upset the whole order of our
lives. "So it seems that during these two years we have grown no wiser,
colder, or calmer," I thought as I began walking about the rooms. "So
there will again be tears, outcries, curses, packing up, going abroad,
then the continual sickly fear that she will disgrace me with some
coxcomb out there, Italian or Russian, refusing a passport, letters,
utter loneliness, missing her, and in five years old age, grey hairs." I
walked about, imagining what was really impossible--her, grown handsomer,
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